Sikh Temple Mass Shootings/Hostage Taking

[Coconut Flan]

Of course not.

[latraviata]

Of course not.

Would you care to explain? Because I really don't understand what it means.

[Maggie Mae]

I have no idea what you mean.

The people from chick-fil-a who are still whining about how persecuted they are because people didn't like that they are bigots.

[Coconut Flan]

You know the multiple topics about the chicken restaurant taking over conversation for over a week now?

[latraviata]

The people from chick-fil-a who are still whining about how persecuted they are because people didn't like that they are bigots.

The anti gay marriage people? But they are bigots.

[latraviata]

You know the multiple topics about the chicken restaurant taking over conversation for over a week now?

Sorry, I am not American and English is not my first language, so I didn't connect the dots. I thought it was an expression, a saying.

Now I do.

[Coconut Flan]

OK, glad it makes sense now.

[JMarie]

I wonder if the shooter has been unemployed for an extended time, and the massacre was more xenophobic-motivated, rather than religiously-motivated. The shooter could have been looking around his community, noticing that local businesses may be owned by immigrants, and concluded that his possible employment opportunities were being taken by foreigners.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

We ran in the same circles. I was a "White Nationalist" for years, and a neo-nazi skinhead for most of that time. I knew the guys in several of the bands he's been with and had gone to a lot of their shows. We never really hung out outside of events, but he still didn't strike me as the type to do that sort of thing.

Trivial question, I'm just curious, but... this guy was formerly in the US Army, right? Do you know if he had those tattoos already when he joined?

(Completely related to the content of the tattoos, not size/placement.)

[B5SnowDog]

There were Homeland Security warnings a few years back about white supremacists joining the military in order to gain training to use in home grown terror plots. So many on the right shrugged it off as a liberal conspiracy.

I've read that he was a psychological operations specialist. I get the impression that it's some kind of work with propaganda; hopefully someone can clarify.

[Peas n carrots]

Pretty sure it was because he thought they were Muslims. I used to know the shooter. :(

He is/was a neo-nazi skinhead and has played in a bunch of white power bands. He had been in the Army before that and was very anti-Muslim.

I'm still wondering what would make him do this though because he used to be pretty laid back and wasn't one of the people I'd expect to be very violent, but they may have changed in the last 10 years or so.

eta: He ad a bunch of tattos, but I don't remember any of them being 9/11 - related.

Thanks for sharing Raine, I imagine that is not a part of your life you like to revisit. May I ask what drew you to the movement, and then what made you decide to get out?

[javafriend]

I went to a family reunion in southern AR this weekend and was really shocked when a cousin (about 45 years old with a Dr. after his name) didn't have any idea what a Sikh was. He couldn't pronounce the word and said something like, "I think that's some kind of Muslim, right?" He is the pastor of a large baptist church and attended seminary. Seriously, can you graduate from a baptist seminary without studying world religions?

[Peas n carrots]

I went to a family reunion in southern AR this weekend and was really shocked when a cousin (about 45 years old with a Dr. after his name) didn't have any idea what a Sikh was. He couldn't pronounce the word and said something like, "I think that's some kind of Muslim, right?" He is the pastor of a large baptist church and attended seminary. Seriously, can you graduate from a baptist seminary without studying world religions?

That's the problem. But the thing is, I don't think in school I was ever taught this too, but I am curious about other people. So if there was something I didn't know, my parents would point me to the encylopedias (and when I got older the internet) and tell me to find out for myself. I wonder how people become fearful and hateful instead of curious and open. I consider myself lucky to grow up in a family that was not afraid of "the other."

[CanadianHippie]

Around here the Sikh populations is somewhere between "no affiliation" and "Muslim", I can't remember if it's higher, lower, or essentially equal to Christians but there is very little reason to actually cover the religion in school since most people have some interactions and understanding of Sikhism. I do know that my parents took my sister and I to an open house at a Sikh temple when we were little and I didn't much care for the lunch they offered, but covering my hair was way cool and listening to them talk about their religion was just as cool.

[javafriend]

I guess what I find really disturbing is that my relative is the leader of a large congregation of people who see him as an authority on religion. The leader of a big church in a small town can be very influential - even with people outside the congregation so I see this level of ignorance as very troubling.

OTS - I also saw a billboard on RT 40 somewhere between Little Rock and Memphis which announced in large letters: APPLY THE ROD AND SAVE YOUR CHILD! and then quoted the "spare the rod" scripture. It all makes me glad that I don't live there.

[Coconut Flan]

Sad isn't it? I don't think our relatives in AR have ever seen a Sikh. I doubt that there are any Sikhs or Muslims within maybe 50 miles of them and I doubt that they would know the difference. But then they do believe in being polite and kind to all people so they would treat everyone the same.

[Maggie Mae]

I don't think I knew about the Sikh until I watched an episode of "The Office" where the boss was thinking that the Sikh IT guy was a Muslim. I took World Religions and Comparative Religions in High School/College. It might have been mentioned, but since it's not something I encounter often, it never really stuck with me.

I think there just aren't enough Sikh in the US for it to be mentioned/taught in schools. At least not where I grew up. Although thinking about it now, I guess there must have been. We had a huge (well, for the US) population, and lots of Jewish people and Catholics and Baptists. There was a Hindu temple too.

[Kaylee]

I wonder if the shooter has been unemployed for an extended time, and the massacre was more xenophobic-motivated, rather than religiously-motivated. The shooter could have been looking around his community, noticing that local businesses may be owned by immigrants, and concluded that his possible employment opportunities were being taken by foreigners.

He lost his trucking job about 2 years ago. I dunno if he was working since then, but I know the bands were touring some - not enough for a stable income though. From what I remember, his employment problems had more to do with staying drunk and running his mouth than with immigration (same deal with the Army), but he still may have blamed them on it.

Trivial question, I'm just curious, but... this guy was formerly in the US Army, right? Do you know if he had those tattoos already when he joined?

I don't think so. Even back when I first met him, he didn't have anywhere near as many tattoos as he did in the last couple years. I'm pretty sure the military will still keep you from joining for racially offensive tattoos, because I know of at least one person who couldn't join because of that and have heard others advise people who wanted to go into the military not to get those sorts of tattoos. Then again, I also know of plenty of guys who had racial tattoos while in the military and either were able to explain them away or were somewhere nobody cared or noticed.

I've read that he was a psychological operations specialist. I get the impression that it's some kind of work with propaganda; hopefully someone can clarify.

Yes, it's basically targeting and developing propaganda and other publications and media directed toward a foreign population within an area of military operations. Distributing propaganda and misinformation leaflets, sometimes coming up with things to unsettle or scare enemy combatants (loud music, etc). It's sort of a combination of PR/advertising and screwing with people's minds, but not the kind of brainwashing/reprogramming mumbo-jumbo some of the conspiracy sites are trying to make it out to be.

He is the pastor of a large baptist church and attended seminary. Seriously, can you graduate from a baptist seminary without studying world religions?

Yes, far too many seminary programs only touch on the major religions and if they mentioned the Sikhs, it might have been one day of one class. Many of them also assume that you would have studied world religions more in depth in your previous education, so they focus on apologetics and how to convert people from other religions more than on their actual culture or even an in-depth look at their beliefs.

[YPestis]

I'm not surprised the shooter is a guy on the fringe with a ton of personal baggage. It seems most shooters come from a sad place in their life. I'm curious as to why the articles I'm reading state that the police is still trying to piece a motive? It seems pretty obvious to me. The guy was into the white power thing, he was struggling to hold down a job, his life wasn't going too well...he probably started blaming "foreigners" for his troubles. You know, "they" took away his job, "they" killed Americans on 9/11 etc. It's all about the fear of the Other and how the Other caused all his problems. He probably reached a snapping point and decided to seek out the Other to kill. Sikhs are easy targets due to their religious attire, their skin color, the fact many have "foreign-sounding" names. He probably assumed they were Muslim, or at the very least, foreigners. Plenty of Americans assume if you are not white and going to church, you must be a foreigner. I grew up in this country, speak the language with no accent, yet I still have patients ask me if I arrived recently. At least one patient told me it was "obvious" I was a foreigner, because "look at you!". Yeah, I look Chinese. Evidently, she hadn't heard that the Chinese have been immigrating here since the 19th century but I digress....

[Kaylee]

Thanks for sharing Raine, I imagine that is not a part of your life you like to revisit. May I ask what drew you to the movement, and then what made you decide to get out?

It's a long story on both parts.

As far as what draw me to the movement, I was raised in a racist household but a very diverse neighborhood. I never rally felt like I fit in anywhere, was sometimes bullied by kids of other races, and was always being told how bad "those" people were and how white people were better. My dad had been in the Klan and made it seem pretty cool and there was more of a stigma in my house towards being liberal than racist. The girl's home I was sent to just furthered the idea that God made races separate for a reason and interracial dating was a sin.

When I got back home, at 13, I got involved sort of on the fray of the goth and punk scene and discovered oi (skinhead music) and the skinhead scene (which isn't all racist) at about the same time I found Stormfront (it was tiny then, maybe 1-200 people, you could read a day's posts in an hour or two & I could go in the chat room and know 1/2 the people there personally). Most of the trads (non-racist skins) were more stand-offish and seemed not to want anything to do with new girls until they'd proven themselves, but the racist guys took me in and made me feel like I was part of something, and my dad was more accepting of skinheads than punks or goths. I got involved in the music/party scene and read & posted a lot of Stormfront, and was a chatroom moderator there at the age of 14.

The movement's one of those places where a person who's halfway competent at anything can rise pretty high pretty quickly - I got to know a lot of people, traveled some, joined what then was the largest and most organized neo-Nazi group in the US and was invited to a national leadership conference at 18. For someone who always felt outside of everything else, I just felt like I belonged and loved the recognition. I met my husband through this group and we ended up going on to be local & state leaders of a few groups and organized many events. I felt like I was finally doing something and it felt like the right thing at the time.

Later on, I started questioning a lot of it but kept on because I didn't know how to tell my husband I wanted out of it, didn't want to lose my friends, was scared of possible repercussions, and really didn't know what else to do with my life. This is the part I feel most bad about - where I stayed around for a few years even once I knew it wasn't right and that it was hurting people, because I was still more concerned about myself than the people the movement affected.

I was getting disillusioned with the whole racist movement because of stuff we saw. The way a lot of people live their lives - not working, using drugs, staying drunk, abusing or cheating on their spouses, yet blaming all of those same things in society on other races. Also, being expected to overlook or cover up those things and to have those people in my home despite that sort of stuff, because we held the same ideology. I'd believed in this mythical noble great white culture (sort of like the upper-class Victorian model that VF promotes, ignoring the lower classes who made it possible) and instead I was seeing the worse of society and it had white skin, while I was getting to know people of other races who were decent and had a lot better lives and morals than many of the movement people.

Also, I grew up in a mixed neighborhood and had a few friends when I was younger who were black and Hispanic, and a couple friends and family by marriage who were Jewish. As we got older, several of my old friends married inter-racially and I had several coworkers who were in interracial relationships. It started to dawn on me how screwed up it was to reject people I'd known for years because of who they loved or dated and I made friends with some of those coworkers and realized there wasn't really any difference or anything wrong with marrying a person of another race.

Sort of intertwined with that, I'd always had somewhat feminist leanings and, in my 20s, I started to learn more about intersectionality and how it all worked together. I also got involved in the fat/size acceptance movement. I realized how hypocritical it was for me to fight discrimination that affected me but support other types of prejudice and discrimination, even those that affected and bolstered each other. I also met a lot of people of color through those groups and through blogs and realized we had a lot in common. Seeing that made me realize I was just supporting a system that used race to keep us divided and working against our own interests.

Later on, my husband came out as bisexual, and I spent a while reading a lot of LGBT and ally writings and blogs and eventually taking part in some public activism. That was sort of the same thing - working for one sort of equality really showed me the importance of working for all kinds, and I began to see and get to know even more people that I'd put into some sort of an "other" category that were really a lot like me and had a lot of the same goals, hopes, and stuff in their lives.

The final straw was two-fold.

Part of it was studying theology and examining my religious beliefs. It became pretty clear to me that if God saved people of all races and if Christians were supposed to love each other like a big family and not makes distinctions or divisions, then God wasn't racist and racism was a sin. That also meant, to me, that it wasn't enough to just quietly change my mind or be quietly polite around my racist friends, but that I need to actively speak out against racism and prejudice where I see it.

The biggest thing, though, was having a child. A lot of my opinions and beliefs were already changing when I was pregnant because I become involved in some online birth communities that were multi-racial and again the common bond of pregnancy and motherhood overshadowed race. Then, after my son was born, I realized that I really didn't want him around the racist movement and I wanted to raise him to be accepting and to find love and friendship regardless of race or color. It just seemed really wrong to start him out in life by teaching him that some people were less than him or were to be avoided just because they were different in some way.

[2xx1xy1JD]

We were away last weekend and just felt ill when we learned about this horror.

Hatred and ignorance are a shitty combination.

Raine - thanks for sharing what you know. It's damn scary. Did your husband come out of the movement with you?

This is why it's important to fight bigotry and ignorance. Guess what, folks? No, you CAN'T think that you know all about a group just by looking at them. And no, you can't think that you live in a magic bubble where hatred and ignorance don't affect you, because you are one of the good guys. The bad guys may be too stupid to tell the difference.

One thing that really surprised hubby about the initial American coverage of the shooting was the way that they were actually explaining what a Sikh is. In light of the "mistaken for Muslims" theory, I suppose it makes sense, but it was a shocking reminder of just how different the rest of the world can be from our multicultural bubble. There's a very large Sikh population here - it's larger than the American Sikh population, despite the fact that the general American population is 10X larger. To put it in a bit more perspective - you are far more likely to encounter a Sikh than a white fundie Christian in the Toronto or Vancouver area.

[Kaylee]

Raine - thanks for sharing what you know. It's damn scary. Did your husband come out of the movement with you?

Sort of. He's still racist, but got out of the organized movement before I did. I was always the higher profile and more involved one between the two of us, so I kept feeling drawn back to it. He left because he got fed up with the drama and bickering and because we were spending a lot of money on travel and events, but doesn't see anything wrong with it or with racist beliefs.

He still wants to go to vents and hang out with people in the movement at times just to catch up and because most of our friends are still a part of it, but I don't think it's quite sunk in yet that if many of these people knew how he identified that he'd be right up there with other races on the list of people they'd like to see dead or gone. I miss a lot of the people too, because some of them are decent in most ways and a lot of them are sort of victims in their own way, but it's not worth it to me to raise my son the same way I was raised and risk him growing up hating and not getting to know people who are different than him, or having to deal with the huge amount of crap the movement brings into your life.